I stared hard at him, not at first quite understanding what he meant.

“The Old Master I can make best,” continued Dick, “is Claude Lorraine, whom you may have heard of occasionally as a famous painter of classical landscapes.  I don’t exactly know (he has been dead so long) how many pictures he turned out, from first to last; but we will say, for the sake of argument, five hundred.  Not five of these are offered for sale, perhaps, in the course of five years.  Enlightened collectors of old pictures pour into the market by fifties, while genuine specimens of Claude, or of any other Old Master you like to mention, only dribble in by ones and twos.  Under these circumstances, what is to be done?  Are unoffending owners of galleries to be subjected to disappointment?  Or are the works of Claude, and the other fellows, to be benevolently increased in number, to supply the wants of persons of taste and quality?  No man of humanity but must lean to the latter alternative.  The collectors, observe, don’t know anything about it—­they buy Claude (to take an instance from my own practice) as they buy all the other Old Masters, because of his reputation, not because of the pleasure they get from his works.  Give them a picture with a good large ruin, fancy trees, prancing nymphs, and a watery sky; dirty it down dexterously to the right pitch; put it in an old frame; call it a Claude; and the sphere of the Old Master is enlarged, the collector is delighted, the picture-dealer is enriched, and the neglected modern artist claps a joyful hand on a well-filled pocket.  Some men have a knack at making Rembrandts, others have a turn for Raphaels, Titians, Cuyps, Watteaus, and the rest of them.  Anyhow, we are all made happy—­all pleased with each other—­all benefited alike.  Kindness is propagated and money is dispersed.  Come along, my boy, and make an Old Master!”

CHAPTER V.

He led the way into the street as he spoke.  I felt the irresistible force of his logic.  I sympathized with the ardent philanthropy of his motives.  I burned with a noble ambition to extend the sphere of the Old Masters.  In short, I took the tide at the flood, and followed Dick.

We plunged into some by-streets, struck off sharp into a court, and entered a house by a back door.  A little old gentleman in a black velvet dressing-gown met us in the passage.  Dick instantly presented me:  “Mr. Frank Softly—­Mr. Ishmael Pickup.”  The little old gentleman stared at me distrustfully.  I bowed to him with that inexorable politeness which I first learned under the instructive fist of Gentleman Jones, and which no force of adverse circumstances has ever availed to mitigate in after life.  Mr. Ishmael Pickup followed my lead.  There is not the least need to describe him—­he was a Jew.